An inmate who pleaded guilty to beating his cellmate to death as they drank homemade alcohol in their Maryland cell has been sentenced to 30 years in prison without parole.
The Hagerstown Herald-Mail reports the sentence 36-year-old Mark Andrew Topper received Monday comes on top of lengthy sentences he already faces for previous convictions.
Topper pleaded guilty in March to second-degree murder in the 2016 death of 26-year-old Benjamin Hall, who was serving a theft sentence.
Prosecutor Charles Strong has said Topper pummeled Hall to death at Maryland Correctional Institution-Hagerstown. He told a judge evidence of the severity of the beating including shoeprints on the 26-year-old victim's head and body.
Assistant public defender Peter Norris argued that Topper was defending himself, but went too far.
